The Don Banks Music Box to the Putney: the Genesis and Development of the VCS3 Synthesiser

The Don Banks Music Box to The Putney: The genesis and development of the VCS3 synthesiser

JAMES GARDNER

Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand Email: [email protected]

This article traces the development of the EMS VCS3 by earlier historians of technology (e.g. Ferguson 1974; synthesiser from the inception of its precursor, the Don Banks Pinch and Bijker 1984; von Hippel 1988; Edgerton Music Box, through its prototype to its commercial release. 2007). These authors rightly assert the non-linearity of The nature of the design team and their technical and aesthetic technological developments and argue against an fi choices are also discussed. The VCS3 is signi cant in that it overly teleological approach that sees the ‘successful’, was the first commercial European synthesiser and the team ‘stabilised’ design (here the VCS3) as the ‘inevitable’ that created it – Tristram Cary, David Cockerell and Peter Zinovieff – were key figures in the development of British goal of earlier design work. ‘ ’ electronic music. This detailed study of the genesis of the Instead of such a linear model, Pinch and Bijker VCS3 and some of the factors that influenced its design touches advocate a ‘multidirectional view’ in which ‘the on many technical and historiographical strands that may be “successful” stages in the development are not the only examined in more depth by future scholars. ones’ (1984: 411), and note that ‘it is clear that a historical account founded on the retrospective success of the artefact leaves much untold’ (1984: 406). 1. INTRODUCTION This article, then, attempts to clarify a small, ‘sub-history’ within broader field. I do not seek to set out a the- The VCS3,1 launched by Electronic Music Studios oretical model within the Social Construction of (London) Ltd in November 1969 (Cary 1969a; Technology. Rather, I want to present merely an Anonymous 3 1969), was Europe’s first commercially enhanced close-up within the larger picture of synthesiser produced synthesiser. A compact and modestly priced history, while bearing in mind the models and insights package, it sported an array of sound-producing and provided by the above-mentioned writers, and locate the sound-modifying devices that could be freely inter- VCS3’s development in the context of the contemporary connected, and offered real-time physical interaction British electronic music scene in the late 1960s. via its complement of knobs, button and joystick X-Y One of the difficulties when delving into the history controller (Figure 1). of EMS and its products 40 to 50 years after the fact is Almost 50 years on, despite being technologically the relative paucity of extant contemporary doc- ‘obsolete’ (a highly contestable term), and readily umentation and primary source material.3 Most of the available in a number of virtual manifestations, the office, factory and personal correspondence, internal VCS3 has assumed a surprisingly bright glow in the memoranda and material relating to the development firmament of treasured analogue synthesisers. Original of the instruments has been lost or destroyed. While a models command astonishingly high prices on eBay.2 fair amount of technical documentation has survived, In this article I shall outline how this device came into there are very few records concerning the design pro- being, and some of the factors that went into its design. cess of EMS products. Most discussions of this nature The complex interactions between aesthetics, society are likely to have taken place informally and orally; and technology with respect to electronic musical consequently, the researcher must draw heavily on the instruments have been examined over the last 20 years recollections of the surviving parties – whose mem- or so by a number of commentators and theorists (e.g. ories, even with the best of intentions, may be unreli- Pinch and Trocco 1996, 2002; Théberge 1997; Patteson able – and try to divine or reconstruct a plausible and 2016), drawing on more generalised models provided consistent narrative from them. As such, one must 1The synthesiser has, through its history, been variously labelled as acknowledge that there are limits to the accuracy of ‘V.C.S. 3’, ‘VCS-3’, ‘VCS 3’ and ‘VCS3’. The last of these is the most any account of the development of EMS devices. common, and the simplest, which is why I have opted for it. 2For example, a VCS3 sold for $18,995 (c.£13,700) on eBay in March 2016. Another was, as of 8 December 2016, for sale at £10,300: www. 3Pinch and Trocco encountered similar difficulties in their research rlmusic.co.uk/rlm3/ems-vcs3-mk1/. on the Moog synthesiser (Pinch and Trocco 1996: 68).

Organised Sound 22(2): 217–227 © Cambridge University Press, 2017. doi:10.1017/S1355771817000127

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 28 Sep 2021 at 18:51:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771817000127 218 James Gardner

Figure 1. The EMS Putney (VCS3) synthesiser and The Cricklewood keyboard, 1970. Photo courtesy of Robin Wood/EMS Archives.

Overviews of EMS of varying reliability may be superseded his earlier attempts at automated sound- found in many publications (e.g. Manning 1985: control (Manning 1985: 235; Zinovieff 2010; Dowson 235–9; Pinch and Trocco 2002: 276–301; Bate 2006; 2014). Gardner 2016; Helliwell 2016: 183–9) and need not be David Cockerell first entered Zinovieff’s orbit rehearsed here, but it is worth limning the three main around September 1966, building custom hardware for players behind the company. the composer’s expanding studio (Cockerell 2014a). Cockerell was (and remains) a brilliant, practical, goal- orientated electronics engineer, and unlike Zinovieff, 2. EMS: BACKGROUND AND DRAMATIS his musical sympathies – both as listener and as PERSONAE amateur player – lay more with contemporary popular music than with the electronic art-music of the time Peter Zinovieff had set up an electronic music studio in (Cockerell 2000, 2010; Pinch and Trocco 2002: 288). Ebury Street, London by 1963 (Anonymous 1 1963; It is not entirely clear when Tristram Cary was Oram 1963; Davies 1968: 166–7), and moved his initially contacted by Peter Zinovieff but it appears to equipment into a purpose-built structure in his garden have been in late 1966, when Cary was preparing his at 49 Deodar Road, Putney at the end of 1965 music for Expo ’67 (Cary n.d.; Smart 2009: 80). In this (Derbyshire 1965). Zinovieff’s interests in controlled three-person team, Cary functioned as something randomness, probability and sequencing led him to purchase, in mid-1967, a DEC PDP-8/S computer in ‘ ’4 (F'note continued) order to act as a sort of super-sequencer that ‘sequencers’ himself in c.1964 using Post Office uniselectors; the second, an electronic ‘stochastic sequencer’, was built c.1966 by 4Zinovieff had two generations of ‘sequential controllers’ before Mark Dowson with help from Humphrey Evans (Zinovieff 2010, the arrival of the PDP-8/S. He built his first electromechanical 2016; Dowson 2014; Gardner 2016: 59–60).

of a middleman between, or as a counterbalance to, even by US standards […] and allowing for the devalued Zinovieff and Cockerell. Cary had considerable skills pound and other burdens on the importer they are quite in conventional instrumental composition, and had out of the question for most British customers. In any case provided electronic music and sound effects for films we have our own brilliant designers who would produce and television, including Doctor Who. He had been better and cheaper systems if they turned their attention to active in the electronic music field since the late 1940s it. (Cary 1968) and had built his own studio in Fressingfield, in I contend that when Cary refers to ‘our own brilliant Norfolk (Cary 1992: xvi–xxviii; Smart 2009: 30–75). designers’, he actually meant David Cockerell, and It would be fair to say that in the EMS team Cary that the task of producing ‘better and cheaper systems’ functioned as a bluff, pragmatic foil to the blue-sky was one to which Cary and Zinovieff were already thinking of Zinovieff, who was more of an animateur turning their attention in principle, if not in practice. and conceptualist. By early 1969, Zinovieff was ima- By August 1968, then, the three main characters, or gining a time when the computer would be able to reagents, of EMS were in place, and it seems likely that be taught ‘the real meaning of words as complicated, sooner or later they would have produced some kind of say, as “catharsis” and respond to them musically’ commercially available electronic music equipment; (Zinovieff 1969: 169). Such flights of fancy were rather partly to fill the obvious gap in the market that Cary removed from the deadlines and briefs that Cary had had identified, and partly to finance the Putney studio. to meet as a busy freelance composer. But we have to But in the autumn of that year, a catalyst arrived to be careful here, and bear in mind that Zinovieff had speed up the process: Australian composer Don Banks. hand-soldered much of the cabling in his studios and Banks had been in the UK since 1950 (Hair 2007: 7, 19). had also, perforce, become a computer programmer Like Tristram Cary, he was by necessity a pragmatic, (Zinovieff 2010, 2016). It would be misleading to jobbing composer who did much film and TV work, as characterise him only as a lofty etiolated spirit, or to well as what Cary would call ‘concert music’; the two caricature him as some sort of aristocratic dilettante, as composers’ paths had already crossed thanks to their do Pinch and Trocco (Pinch and Trocco 2002: 281). He movie assignments. Banks’s interest in electronic got his hands dirty. Conversely, for all of Cary’s music had been piqued by a 1966 Paris performance of pragmatism, he did share Zinovieff’s essentially mod- Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism 2 for four live ernist view that electronic music was a new medium performers and pre-recorded sounds (Banks 1970b), and consequently deserved ‘innovative’ instruments but he had no studio access, nor enough money to rather than ‘imitative’ ones (Ungeheuer 2008, quoted purchase any suitable electronic equipment of his own in Patteson 2016: 164). (Banks 1972, 1977). Zinovieff and Cary organised the first public concert of exclusively electronic music in London, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 15 January 1968. The concert 3. THE DON BANKS MUSIC BOX sold out (Crichton 1968) and attracted a good deal of publicity (e.g. Anonymous 2 1968; Cleave 1968), The basic story of the Don Banks Music Box has largely due to the onstage presence of Zinovieff’s been recounted by Cary (and others) in print and PDP-8/S, which ‘performed’ his Partita for Unattended in interviews in various media, with minor variations Computer in real time (e.g. Sadie 1968; Various (e.g. Cary 1992: xxv, 2006; Bate 2006). However, the Authors 1968). nearest to a contemporary account that I have come By mid-1968, Zinovieff’s Putney studio had hosted across so far is Banks’s own, from 1972. His story of an SPNM weekend for composers (Gilbert 1968), the instrument’s origin runs like this: ’ appeared in Hugh Davies s International Electronic when spending an evening with Peter Zinovieff – Music Catalog (Davies 1968: 166 7) and was gaining I complained bitterly about the lack of facilities for recognition. But it was expensive to maintain and composers to learn the language of electronic music. expand, and despite Zinovieff’s access to considerable Peter, as generous as ever, said he would ask David to wealth, an additional source of revenue was necessary. design a kind of instrument which would incorporate a Cockerell recalls a conversation with Zinovieff in number of facilities which one would need to know about July 1968 about establishing some kind of company to in the production and treatment of sound. 3 Weeks [sic] sell electronic music hardware (Cockerell 2014a). The later I had a grey box […] which incorporated all the basic ‘ following month The Guardian published an article principles. At the time it was known as the Don Banks ’ by Cary in which he argued for a National Centre Music Box . Actually three were built and are still in use. (Banks 1972) for Electronic Music. It included this intriguing paragraph: There are two things to note here. First, Banks says ‘At Two manufacturers in America, Moog of New York and the time it was known as the “Don Banks Music Box”’ Buchla of San Francisco, do market electronic music (hereafter DBMB). I shall return to this point later. devices in modular form[.] […] But the prices are high Second, he mentions that three units were constructed.

Figure 2. Keith Humble’s synthesiser (c.1968) built into a larger unit by Graham Thirkell and now in the collection of MESS Ltd, Melbourne. Photo: James Gardner.

The other two units eventually went to Lawrence testing the water for a commercial product at this Casserley, then Cary’s student at the Royal College of early stage. Music, and Banks’s Australian friend, the composer In later interviews and articles, Cary asserted that Keith Humble (Figure 2).5 the DBMB was called the VCS-1, positioning it clearly It is also worth noting that the DBMB’s design as the first device in a consciously numbered series specification did not come from Banks himself. culminating in the VCS3. In this sense, Cary could be According to his 1972 account, he deferred to seen to be guilty of the ‘linear’ approach disparaged by, Zinovieff and Cockerell as to ‘which facilities […] one inter alios, Pinch and Bijker. I have, however, found no would need to know about’–note the imperative. use of the term ‘VCS-1’ that pre-dates the release of the It could be argued, then, that one of the main VCS3, and I would argue that the ‘VCS-1’ name for determinants of the DBMB design was Zinovieff the DBMB was applied only retrospectively; well after and Cockerell’s opinion of what a composer ought to the VCS3 name had been adopted in the second half of find useful. 1969. The earliest use of the term ‘VCS-1’ I have found Another determinant, of course, was Banks’s budget. thus far is in a letter from Banks to the New Zealand Tristram Cary’s accounts of the genesis of the DBMB composer Douglas Lilburn, dated 30 August 1970 are similar to those of Banks, but Cary consistently (Banks 1970a). claims that Banks came to ‘us’–rather than Zinovieff Lawrence Casserley’s unit does not actually say alone – and that his price limit was £50, rather than the ‘VCS-1’ anywhere. Rather, it is labelled ‘Electronic £100 that Banks once recalled (Banks 1977). Music Studios Sound Synthesizer’ in Letraset. Casserley Cockerell’s account suggests the DBMB was made is adamant that the label was already on the device partly to assess the appetite among musicians for such when he picked it up in spring 1969 from Delia a device: ‘I just put together various bits and pieces that Derbyshire, to whom it was on loan (Casserley 2015a). I’d previously built for Peter and put them in a self- At the time, it had been in the Camden studio of contained box to see if musicians would find any use Kaleidophon – the company name under which for it’ (Cockerell 2010). It would be a stretch to see this Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus were as ‘market research’ but it does hint that Zinovieff was then working. The circulation of this particular DBMB can be seen as a kind of beta-testing on the part of EMS 5Don Banks’s original unit is at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney by potentially interested colleagues or acquaintances. (Powerhouse Museum n.d.). Lawrence Casserley’s is in the None of these, it should be noted, was directly active in Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (Blommers 2001). Keith Humble’s the popular music field, though Derbyshire and device, incorporated by Graham Thirkell into a larger unit that also fi includes an early EMS twin ring modulator, is in the collection of Hodgson did associate with gures from the con- MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio Ltd). temporary underground and countercultural art

scenes. Asked about his first encounters with the 7. Ring Modulator/Voltage Controlled Amplifier. DBMB and VCS3, Hodgson reflected on the loose 8. Reverb. professional and social networks of the time: It is worth noting that the DBMB does not offer an I seem to remember Peter mentioning Don Banks and easy way of producing sequences of specific discrete things like that. One was just on the scene – it’s hard to pitches from its front panel controls, or straightfor- explain the complete informality of the way life was in ward control of pitch from an external keyboard. This those days, in the ’60s. Nowadays everything’s cut and is hardly hardly surprising, given Banks’s needs and … dried. In those days we were all wafting around. [ ]It Cary and Zinovieff’s aims. The patching, by means of – was much more informal a whole lot of relationships RCA connectors, is reasonably flexible, allowing were. […] Tristram was around quite a lot, and he was a devices to be connected in many different ways; there is good friend of Delia and me. And so in a way a lot of the communications that went on with EMS would go no normalised signal or control path. The DBMB is a through Tristram. (Hodgson 2014) compact, self-contained device designed for sound- generation and sound-processing, offering a lot of The informal knowledge-sharing that was common ‘bang for the buck’. Described thus, it may easily be among electronic music practitioners of the time is also viewed as a precursor of the VCS3, though its human illustrated by the handwritten instructions and notes interface is crude: just rotary knobs and one attack- that Banks prepared for Keith Humble to help him get initiation button. But it would be misleading to – to grips with his DBMB (Banks 1969) notes that in describe the DBMB as a VCS3 ‘prototype’: there seems ’ turn amplify Cockerell s original instructions to Banks to be no evidence, at its design stage, that there was a (Cockerell 1968). vision of a more sophisticated commercial synthesiser If we regard the DBMB as a convenient and cost- for which the DBMB was a portent. effective collection of devices that David Cockerell From the outset, then, the DBMB was designed with assembled for Banks, we have to ask how this signal processing and synthetic tone generation in fi fi speci c collection was arrived at. A de nitive answer mind. This ability to process external sounds as well as to that question is impossible at this distance, but to generate them internally was carried into the design it seems likely that Zinovieff and (probably) Cary of the VCS3. drew on their combined experience as electronic Banks was clearly delighted with his new synthe- music practitioners and conferred about the most siser: ‘Thank heaven for the age of miniaturisation’ he useful devices. This, of course begs the question: enthused, ‘because this was small enough for me to useful for what? The point here is that the criteria take to bed with headphones, and to start to explore a behind this choice are not simply technical or new world of sound’ (Banks 1970b). Indeed, on a trip pragmatic, but also aesthetic. As I noted earlier, we to his native Australia in April 1970,6 the Sydney ’ could characterise Cary and Zinovieff s standpoint Morning Herald reported that: with regard to electronic music as post-war modernist, seeking to create a new music from the raw materials One advantage of electronic music is that you can com- of sound, freed from the constraints of acoustic pose sitting up in your bed, with the aid of your Voltage Controlled Synthesiser. The V.C.S. (also known as the instruments, and thus the technological design of the Don Banks Music Box) produces [… various waveforms DBMB is closely allied with these aesthetic, or even …] Australian composer Don Banks had his electronic ideological, aims. synthesiser specially built for him, and takes it with him What features did they choose for the DBMB? everywhere he goes […] At home in Purley, near London, he takes it to bed to work out sound combinations, but uses headphones to placate his wife, who objects to elec- 4. THE DON BANKS MUSIC BOX: BASIC tronic music at bedtime. (Jones 1970) FEATURES Banks did not see his synthesiser as the VCS3’s linear ‘ 1. White Noise Generator. forebear. When asked whether the DBMB was the ’ 2. Mic. pre-amp. beginning of the VCS3 , he answered: 3. Envelope Generator (with attack and decay Well, yes, in a very funny way I expect it could be seen as controls only). that. But it was only because I was putting the pressure on 4. High Frequency Oscillator (sawtooth/triangle with Zinovieff that … you know, there were a whole number of variable waveshape) with a quoted basic frequency independent composers who needed help, who needed to range of 1Hz to 2kHz, but greater via voltage- be able to work at home. And I expect probably from that … control. that [the VCS3] did start. But that was not originally not 5. Low Frequency Oscillator: falling sawtooth wave only, 25–300Hz range. 6Banks did own a VCS3 by this time – he had taken delivery of one in 6. Filter with variable Q, capable of self-oscillation. January that year – but he obviously relished the portability of Cutoff not voltage-controllable. the DBMB.

in Zinovieff’s mind. I think it just happened that he saw with optional automatic retriggering), and therefore a there was a demand. (Banks 1977; my italics) significant advance on the DBMB, while the noise, ring modulator and reverb are similar to those of the earlier Banks’s assertion that numerous composers had been device. The instrument would appear, like the VCS3, in the same position as him is worthy of note: there to be designed as a ‘stereo’ (more accurately, two- was a perceived need, and market, for such a device. – Not only that, Banks credited the later VCS3 with channel) device the DBMB was mono. More significant, perhaps, is the first mention of the empowering the previously disenfranchised ‘indepen- ‘Pin Panel Matrix’ for patching. This would be one of dent composer’: ‘we were able as independent compo- the VCS3’s most characteristic features and, indeed, sers at the time to make a start at [electronic music]’ selling points. Like the DBMB, Moog and Buchla (Banks 1977). instruments employed patch cords for interconnecting The DBMB, while useful, was not, in Cary’s opi- their modules. Complex patches would result in a nion, sufficiently well-specified to be a viable com- ‘ tangled thicket of cables, but the matrix patching was mercial product, but it spurred us on to dream up a ‘ ’ more sophisticated package with features we couldn’t tidier, dispensing with such knitting , and had the added advantage – by doing away with jack sockets – put into Don’s little grey box’ (Cary 2000), a package of enabling a much more compact panel design. that ‘would appeal not only to composers but also to Are there any surviving examples of the EMS Elec- schools […] [a] very good teaching instrument for tronic Music Studio Mk I, the ‘VCS2’? As so often with acoustics and so forth’ (Cary 2003). early descriptions of EMS devices, this enticingly The positive reception of the DBMB, then, led the ‘ ‘ detailed text is best described as somewhat aspira- team to consciously address in the subsequent pack- ’ ’ tional . In later life, Cary seemed unsure about the age not only what they perceived as the needs of the ‘ ’ art music composer, but also to position the new device putative device. In one account he says I m not sure what the VCS2 was like, or even if there was one’ (Cary so it might appeal to a wider market. n.d.), and in another ‘The VCS 2 was abortive and intermediate’ (Cary 2000). David Cockerell has, how- fi 5. THE EMS ELECTRONIC MUSIC STUDIO MK I ever, con rmed that no functioning device matching the description of the Studio Mk I was ever actually Following their success with the January 1968 concert built (Cockerell 2014b). It seems clear, then, that if of electronic music at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, anything can be called the ‘VCS2’–the ‘missing link’ Zinovieff and Cary organised a second in February between the DBMB and the VCS3 – this piece of 1969. The elaborate foil-fronted programme booklet vapourware is it. Whether or not the Studio Mk I was for that concert includes many essays and interviews, actually constructed, the advertised ‘product’ suggests as well as about 20 pages that would now be thought of a concerted effort on the part of the team from late ‘ ’ as an advertorial for EMS (Various Authors 1969) 1968 into 1969 to create a marketable product that was (Figure 3). Somewhat prematurely, EMS was by now significantly more advanced than the DBMB. The 7 presenting itself as a viable company offering no less specification here is perhaps best viewed as a snapshot than three products, described in some detail in this of the point the design process had reached when the fi – booklet. The rst two the Twin Ring Modulator, and programme booklet went to print. It was not – to use – the Dynamic Filter were hand-made in very small Pinch and Bijker’s terms – a ‘closed’ or ‘stabilised’ quantities. But it is the third product that is of most artefact. interest for the VCS3 story. This is the ‘EMS Electro- nic Music Studio Mk I’, with a quoted price of £260. Its specifications, as detailed in the programme booklet, 6. TRISTRAM CARY’S VCS3 PROTOTYPE indicate a rather more sophisticated unit than the DBMB. Although the Studio Mk I was not actually made, its Considered as the precursor of the VCS3, there are a specification built on that of the DBMB and shows the few notable things about the Studio Mk I’s advertised direction Cary, Cockerell and Zinovieff were taking as features. It has two oscillators, which both have the they worked to design a viable commercial product same (wide) frequency range and provide ‘various during the early months of 1969. According to Cary, at waveforms’. There is a VCF with voltage-controlled least some of the discussions took place at the Cedar centre frequency and, unusually, voltage-controlled Tree Pub in Putney Bridge Road and it was reputedly bandwidth – just like EMS’s contemporary Dynamic there that the distinctive L-shaped ‘baby desk’ form of Filter. The description of the envelope generator is the VCS3 emerged (Cary 2000, 2003, n.d.). There are very similar to that of the VCS3 (attack, on, decay, off, conflicting reports on just whose idea this shape was. According to Zinovieff (2000), Cary ‘came up with 7 EMS was incorporated as a limited company on 25 July 1969. The it and we liked it. […] he found it easy to work with, Memorandum and Articles of Association are in the EMS archives in Cornwall. and he thought this was the right way of having

Figure 3. The ﬁrst page of the description of the ‘EMS Electronic Studio MkI’ from the QEH concert programme, 10 February 1969. Author’s collection.

an angle, so you could sit in front of it’. Cockerell dials and matrix patch board9 were initially sourced (2000) thought the ‘desk’ was ‘a very good shape, those from the electronic surplus shops in Lisle Street two panels that face you in that way. I think [Cary] saw (Cockerell 2000, 2016), and it was also Cockerell’s idea it mostly as a teaching machine – demonstrations and to include a joystick in order to control two parameters teaching’. at once (Cockerell 2000). It would seem, then, that Cary’s notion of sitting at Yet the specifics of Cockerell’s oscillator design the VCS3, as if at a school desk, determined the overall decisions were also informed by the musical aesthetics shape of the VCS3, and he hand-built the wooden case of Cary and Zinovieff. Neither composer was overly in this form for the prototype (Cary n.d.; Cockerell concerned in their electronic music with stable, equal- 2010; Zinovieff 2010), delivered to Cockerell in spring tempered pitches. Despite the first brochure’s claim of 1969. Contemporary documents also suggest it was ‘drift-free performance’ (Cary 1969a), Cockerell’s Cary who came up with the initial layout of the con- initial oscillator designs did not prioritise frequency trols,8 while Cockerell was responsible for the circuit stability, much to the chagrin of later melodically design and construction of the electronics. orientated owners. In the interests of keeping the costs of the VCS3 as The ‘stable’ design of the VCS3 incorporated the low as possible, Cockerell’s circuit designs were again following devices: simple and expedient, and largely based on public 1. Three oscillators, two designed primarily to oper- domain circuits. For the filter he adapted Bob Moog’s ate in the audio frequency range and a third ‘transistor ladder’ design using diodes instead of tran- intended as a sub-audio control (though all three sistors – diodes were much cheaper (Cockerell 2000, had a wide frequency range), all offering continu- 2010). The slow-motion Vernier oscillator frequency ously variable waveforms. 8The panel layout drawings for the VCS3 prototype are clearly in Cary’s hand, and acknowledged as such by Cockerell (Cockerell 9Towards the end of 1968 a large patch matrix had been introduced 2015). The actual panel labelling on the prototype, however, is to connect devices in Zinovieff’s studio (Cockerell 2014a); this probably Cockerell’s. prompted the use of a matrix on the smaller machine.

2. A noise generator with integral filtering for The rough-and-ready layout of Cary’s vernal pro- different colours of noise. totype was neatened, and its design formalised, into the 3. A filter with voltage-controlled cutoff frequency, one-off pre-production unit11 pictured on the cover capable of self-oscillation. of the first VCS3 brochure, dated November 1969. The 4. An envelope/trapezoid generator with attack, on, ‘productionisation’ process of the synthesiser was, decay and off controls, with voltage-controlled however, already under way by July 1969, and this was decay. undertaken by the brothers Gerry and Brian Rodgers, 5. A ring modulator. soon to operate as EMS (Bournemouth) and who 6. A spring reverb unit, with voltage-controlled wet/ would subsequently establish a small factory for VCS3 dry mix. production in Wareham, Dorset. 7. Two input amplifiers/channels (for processing Tristram Cary wrote the text of the first VCS3 bro- external signals). chure and it is clear from the cover photo at least that 8. Two output channels. the instrument was being pitched squarely at the ‘serious 9. Two built-in loudspeakers. composer’. Its iconography is clear: horn-rimmed glasses, apen– and the VCS3 itself – rest on an opened book As mentioned earlier, the VCS3 also had a push-button about computer music, showing a notated musical for triggering the envelope generator, a joystick, and a example. To be fair, Cary’s text does attempt to appeal to meter for displaying signal or control voltages. a wide range of potential users, noting five distinct types As such the VCS3 specification represented a con- of application,12 and emphasising its design credentials solidation and refinement of that given for the ‘Studio and cost effectiveness: ‘The VCS3 Electronic Music Stu- Mk I’, rather than a huge advance on it. There is sim- dio is the result of two years collaboration between ply insufficient documentation to account for the musicians and electronic engineers and embodies cir- changes, but it is plausible that the practicalities of cuitry which cannot be equaled by instruments costing making all the important signal and control voltages four or five times its price’ (Cary 1969a). accessible via the 16x16-hole matrix might explain, for Cary also draws attention to a possible playing instance, the simplified filter design (no voltage- mode: ‘The joystick is placed so that it and the [attack] controlled bandwidth), the reduced parameters of button can both be operated by the right hand, leaving which would free up space on the matrix for, say, a the other free for altering knobs or matrix plugging’ valuable additional oscillator.10 The similarity of the (ibid.). The VCS3 was much more playable than the VCS3 and ‘Studio Mk I’ specification does suggest that DBMB and much thought (and beta-testing feedback) the bulk of the design work took place during the had clearly gone into its ergonomics and interface. winter of 1968–69. This, along with its ability to process external sources, According to Tristram Cary, many visiting compo- and low cost, contributed to its rapid adoption by live sers were shown, or lent, the prototype VCS3, as they electronics groups such as Intermodulation and Gentle had the DBMB (Cary 2003). Again, this was an Fire.13 Indeed, by February 1971, the use of the VCS3 informal beta-testing, among the small circle of Cary by such groups was sufficiently ubiquitous for Michael and Zinovieff’s acquaintances in the world of art music Nyman – an early adopter himself – to quip about ‘the (Cary n.d.). At this early stage, there seems to have regulation VCS 3’ when reviewing Gentle Fire’s been no attempt to pitch the prototype to anyone from Elizabeth Hall debut for the The Musical Times the world of popular music. (Nyman 1971). Although the leaflet is dated November 1969, the first VCS3s were delivered to customers in December. 7. THE FIRST VCS3 LEAFLET, AND VCS3 The very earliest VCS3s seem to have been priced at PRODUCTION £285, but within weeks £330 was established as the first 14 Cary’s prototype has a frustratingly smudged marker settled price. While this represented a substantial – pen label that appears to say ‘E.M.S. Studio [Mk..]’ outlay over ten times the average weekly wage (Clark – fi but by August 1969 the name VCS3 – ostensibly 2016) the VCS3 still cost less than one- fth of a standing for Voltage-Controlled Studio [Mark] 3 – had certainly been adopted (Cary 1969b), probably at 11This unit, now in the collection of the National Music Centre, Cary’s behest. He thought it ‘had a good ring about it’ Calgary, was essentially the same as the first production units, (Cary n.d.), but the numbering also retrospectively though it lacked a shape control for oscillator 1. 121. As a complete unit in itself. 2. As an electronic music studio 3. As formalises and linearises what was, in reality, a much a live performance instrument. 4. As a sound effects generator. 5. As more haphazard development process. a teaching aid. 13But not without ambivalence. Gentle Fire’s Hugh Davies wrote: ‘We all had a love/hate relationship with the VCS3 synthesizer’ 10According to Lawrence Casserley, ‘[T]he original plan had a larger (Davies 2001: 57). pin matrix, but they got a very good deal on a batch of 16x16, so 14This assertion is based on an examination of the extant stock cards some planned features were omitted or altered’ (Casserley 2015b). in the EMS archives.

similarly featured Moog. Their least expensive off-the- Zinovieff’s aesthetic stance would have a strong effect shelf model at the time, the Moog Ic, was $4,305 – then on the development of the instrument. around £1,800 (R. A. Moog Inc. 1969). For a short One should not underestimate the influence of the time at least, the VCS3 had no real competition in the salesman, however. Paul Théberge (1997: 54) quotes UK and in continental Europe. von Hippel (1988: 54): ‘Any party that stands to benefit Somewhat surprisingly, Cary seems to have been from [a technical] innovation – as user, manufacturer, aware at the time that EMS’swindowofadvantage supplier, distributor […] can be regarded a potential would not stay open for long. According to an interview source of innovation.’ EMS’s first American agent, in January 1970, he expressed the prescient hope that the Alfred Mayer, pushed for the production of a key- VCS3 could ‘be developed, patented and sold to the board when he took on the US distribution in very American market before the Japanese catch up’ (Abbot early 1970 (Cockerell 2015), but it took EMS many 1970). While the evidence is slim, it would appear that the months to get such a unit designed and manufactured. pressure to take advantage of this short-lived business When it finally did appear, the DK-1 keyboard was opportunity was another factor in getting the VCS3 into playable as a conventional equal-tempered keyboard, production within a few months of its design. but it retained the scalability of the experimental model, allowing the pitch range of the keyboard to be varied to produce micro- and macrotonal intervals. 8. THE KEYBOARD PROBLEM Unusually for the time, the keyboard was also velocity- sensitive, producing a voltage that was proportional to EMS did not release a keyboard for the VCS3 until about strike force. This voltage would ‘normally’ control 15 June 1970. As a result, it has often been assumed that dynamics, but could be assigned to any voltage- 16 the keyboard was merely an afterthought, and not part controllable parameter. of the initial design. The truth is more complicated, Mayer was also responsible for insisting on the however. The final sentence on the first leaflet reads: alternative names for the VCS3 – The Putney18 – and ‘EMS will shortly announce a range of peripheral the DK-1 keyboard – The Cricklewood. The received 17 equipment including a sequencer keyboard which it will wisdom was that for ‘technical’ products, the bepossibletoaddtoanexistingVCS3bysimplyplug- Americans preferred names; the British, numbers ging it in, a special socket havingbeenprovidedforthis (Cary 2000, 2003, n.d.). One can only assume those purpose’ (Cary 1969a). This would indicate that a key- names sounded more exotic to Mayer’s ears than they board was considered from the outset (albeit as an did to those of Londoners. optional peripheral) and an examination of the pre- Much can be made of the VCS3’s lack of keyboard, production unit confirms this – it has an explicitly label- particularly to highlight Cary and Zinovieff’s disdain, led ‘keyboard’ socket on the back. but it is worth remembering that none of the few In fact, Cary and Cockerell did communicate about commercially available synthesisers at the time had a keyboard designed specifically for the VCS3 as early integrated keyboards. The EML ElectroComp 200, as August 1969, some three months before the syn- made specifically for educational use, had none. thesiser’sofficial launch. I will not attempt a detailed Buchla, meanwhile, offered the ‘touch-controlled vol- technical discussion here, but it was conceptually a tage sources’ instead of a conventional keyboard non-standard keyboard – more of a flexible ‘alternate (Pinch and Trocco 2002: 42–5). Moog did, of course, controller’(Cary 1969b). sell a conventional keyboard (always pictured with the Yoking an equal-tempered keyboard to a synthe- synthesiser in brochures), but it was still a separate siser was anathema to Cary, who would later reflect unit. The keyboard became an integral part of the that ‘The whole thing became rather debased I think in synthesiser only with the advent of the Minimoog in the ’60s when keyboards came in. I was quite shocked October 1970 (ibid.: 232). […] because the whole thing about electronic music for me was you were getting away from keyboards, one thing you wanted to avoid in electronic music was 12 9. TOWARDS A CONCLUSION notes to the octave’ (Cary 2006). Again, Cary and In this article I have shown that the development of an electronic musical instrument, even one with such a 15Date is based on an examination of stock cards, supported by other contemporary documents. 16Indeed, Cockerell himself has contributed to this confusion: ‘Peter 18There is a common misconception that the VCS3 was actually and Tristram weren’t really that much interested in well-tempered rebadged as ‘The Putney’ in the USA but this was not the case. music. And I thought it should have had a keyboard from the start. Probably in the interests of economy, most of the production run of We added one on as an afterthought’ (Cockerell 2010). The historical the VCS3 Mk1 carried both names, but the instrument was promoted record does not, however, entirely support Cockerell’s recollections. as ‘The Putney’ in the US and the ‘VCS3’ in the UK. After the 17Cockerell was in fact working on digital sequencer around this time introduction of the ‘Synthi’ brand for the EMS product range in (Cockerell 2015), but the first EMS sequencer keyboard would not spring 1971 the ‘Putney’ and ‘Cricklewood’ names were dropped – as appear until spring 1971. was Mayer as US agent.

short gestation, is multiply determined and non-linear, say, a pocket chess set. […] There are a lot of knobs, to be based on the contingent and sometimes capricious sure, and a handful of unfamiliar labels. But the console is decisions of a number of agencies – or ‘relevant social so small and so innocent looking. One instinctively trusts groups’ as Pinch and Bijker (1984: 414) might put it – it. (Willis 1970) of which the three-man design team was just one. In drilling down via a close examination of extant con- Acknowledgements temporary materials and later interviews I have given a more detailed and plausible account of how and why I should like to thank Lawrence Casserley, David the VCS3 emerged as a ‘stabilised artefact’ in this Cockerell, Les Craythorn, Claire Harris, Brian specific form than earlier histories.19 Hodgson, Fiona McAlpine, James Mooney, Trevor I must acknowledge that there is further work to be Pinch, Nicole Saintilan, Gabriella Smart, Robin Wood done, however, and that the VCS3 is only provisionally and Peter Zinovieff for making available – or alerting ‘complete’. As Théberge (1997: 50) notes: ‘The design me to – material used in the preparation of this article. process alone does not determine how an instrument Thanks are also due to Robin Fox and Byron Scullin comes to embody, limit or exhaust its musical poten- of MESS Ltd, Melbourne for allowing me hands-on tial. Indeed an instrument is never really completed at access to Keith Humble’s DBMB. the stage design and manufacture at all; it is only made “complete” through its use.’ I have made scant mention of the way in which the VCS3 has actually been REFERENCES fi used in music, and sound design; suf ce to say for the Abbot, B. 1970. Radar Led Him to His Music. Diss Express, – – present that its use and therefore meaning broa- 16 January. dened rapidly from the user base originally envisaged Anonymous 1. 1963. This Kind of Music Gets a Family by Cary and Zinovieff, as the synthesiser became Moving. Daily Express, 14 November. associated more and more with popular musics Anonymous 2. 1968. Virtuoso PDP 8/S Getting an Attack of between 1969 and 1973. Over the last two decades new Concert Nerves. The Sun, 16 January. meanings have been conferred on the VCS3 by its Anonymous 3. 1969. British Studio Makes Moog Equiva- positioning in both the ‘vintage’ synthesiser pantheon lent. 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